Commercial media products, such as video games, television programs, movies, books and advertising, are often very expensive to produce. Such media includes events which are designed to provoke a reaction from a user, such as fear or excitement for example, while the user is using or experiencing the media. Since the effectiveness of the events can be directly related to the success of the media product, it is therefore important for the producers of the media to maximize the effectiveness of the events.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of the events, the producer must have a way to objectively determine a level of effectiveness of the events. However many methods used only provide a subjective indication of the effectiveness of the media. Some developers of video games, for instance, have dedicated testing practices for determining marketability or the prospective chances of success of the developer's games. Many of these testing practices involve user's relating feedback about the media. For instance, game developers may have a number of people play their game and then fill out a survey which questions the players about the game. These surveys attempt to elicit responses from the players regarding gameplay design issues and ideas of fun. However, players introduce biases which make the feedback subjective. The surveys also rely on the player's willingness and ability to provide feedback. Also, the surveys cannot address the full scope of the game experience since that would require the player to remember each event in the media and the player's reaction related to each of the events.
Other types of subjective feedback involve focus groups where a group of individuals discuss the game design. However, focus groups include the occurrence of groupthink, where the members of the group try to achieve consensus rather than open discussion on the effectiveness or merits of the media. Also, in these situations a single member of the group can dominate the discussion and the opinion, thereby limiting the range of constructive feedback. Finally, it is difficult to extract useful insights for media design because discussions often center on abstract concepts rather than specific events in the media. The same subjective measures are used in advertising, TV, movie, books and production of other media.
Some producers of media have turned to the use of psychophysiology devices in order to have a more objective determination of the effectiveness of the media. Psychophysiology involves identifying and/or using a connection between psychology and physiology. Psychophysiology can be used to objectively determine a person's emotions, feelings and thoughts related to an event in media based on the person's physiological response to the event. Prior psychophysiology devices have had only limited success in the area of media analysis because of problems associated with sensors of the devices and costs, among other reasons.
One of the problems associated with prior psychophysiology devices is that the measurement station hardware is bulky and extremely expensive. The measurement station requires tens of thousands of dollars in sensing equipment, data recorders and computer interfaces. The measurement station also requires the attention of skilled personnel for set up, operation and maintenance. These measurement stations include wierd sensors that must be attached or glued at various locations across the person's body to detect phsiological responses to the media. These wired sensors are susceptible to data errors from movement and other non-physiological related sources, such as lighting. Accordingly, the person must remain as motionless as possible during a session or test to avoid causing data errors which could render the test useless. Because the person must remain as motionless as possible during the test, these tests are typically short, simple, and do not capture a full game experience in the instance where the media is a video game.
Another problem encountered with the use of prior psychophysiology sensor devices is that errors produced by these devices are difficult or impossible to determine. Errors introduced by outside influences may be interpreted as physiological responses to the media. A skilled operator often must subjectively determine whether the response was generated by a physiological response to the media or if the response is a result of errors in the system.
In addition, it is unclear whether these tests provide actionable information for game, movie, television, advertising and other design because a gap exists between these tests and insights relating to the media. This gap may at least partially be a result of the narrow scope of these previous tests which limits the amount and quality of data gathered. However, another reason for the limited benefit of these tests is that techniques have not previously been developed to translate the data gathered by the measurement station into gameplay design terms and issues.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.